Monday, September 30, 2013

It's Not A Damned Game, Liberals Advocate For The People And Posterity Not A Level Playing Field

Seven years ago, when I began regularly writing out my ideas, confronting fragments of ideas I'd been tossing over in my head for decades, trying to put them into a coherent form that could then be tested against real life, a lot of the previous assumptions I'd made turned out to be wrong.  One of the most wrong ones was the assuring that fair rules for the fight would be sufficient to do what was necessary. What is necessary is  to change laws, to change policies that would achieve economic justice, civil rights, peace and a sustained environment.   It turns out that when things are as grossly unequal as they are virtually everywhere in the world, as they have increasingly become in the past thirty three years, that a level playing field favors those with the most power and wealth.  As if that outcome is not entirely predictable, the most obvious of intuitions.

It is exactly in the matter of outcomes that real, American liberalism* lies, not in the "fairness" of the process that produces it.  I have called the kind of "liberal" who pretends that their work is done when everyone has that weird invention, "more speech" "process liberals".  But I've come to realize they really aren't liberals at all, they belong to a sect of libertarianism.   And, really, that mythical "more speech" which, somehow, never seems to work, unlike that "money-speech" invented by the Supreme Court in Buckley vs. Valeo, is about the only thing that the lib-libertarians have ever produced.   "Money-speech" would seem to prove that it is more equal than "more-speech".

The impotence of that "more-speech" is sufficient to explain why the "liberal" Barack Obama, chasing after enough money-speech to do what has been done so seldom in recent years, win as a Democrat, will not produce a truly liberal administration.  The legalistic language he learned at Harvard Law soothes whatever scruples might trouble him by his role in it.  It also explains the impotence of Democrats in post-Buckley vs Valeo American politics.  Money-speech, owned by those with the most money, turns out to not work on behalf of the poor and destitute.    Notably few of the "civil liberties" lawyers, the media professionals and the academics who push this tripe are in much danger of being poor and destitute, certainly not as long as they are promoting something that so obviously benefits those with lots and lots of money-speech.

The thing that blinds real American liberals to the counterproductive aspects of a lot of this chasing after the abstract ideals that turn out to be counterproductive - leading to such things as the deregulated media that lies on behalf of the highest bidder, grossly unjust laws that enable the most massive theft on behalf of the ultra-rich, the sustenance of racial and gender oppression, etc. - is the reduction of the words used to advocate those into mere slogans, neglecting to see if the slogans address reality as it is today instead of as it was in the 1780s.

But real liberalism is all about outcomes, about results.  There is no room in real liberalism that allows a complacent acceptance of economic, racial, gender injustice merely because the rich and bigoted can obtain results producing those.   Though many who are represented as being liberal do accept those results and there is every reason to consider those faux liberals as favoring those.  Enough of them benefit from the status quo.   Having a free press, after all, is important mostly and most seriously in so far as it aids voters to make informed decisions, changing politics and laws in order to produce an effective beneficial result.  A real liberal believes that justice, true equality and the sustenance of life is that absolutely necessary beneficial result.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press... Those are ringing words and generally admirable, all things being equal, but when "the press" means the massive, electronic media proven beyond any shadow of a doubt to rally exactly the kinds of unthinking and violent mobs that the "founders" endlessly worried about, there is every difference between that and a printing press that could print a four page weekly newspaper.  The medium isn't the message but it certainly makes all the difference in the world when it comes to the speed and violence of the effect that it can have.   And it isn't only the alleged news that has a real, violent effect endangering the lives and rights of people.  The film Birth of a Nation helped promote the most extensive fascist movement in American history, the Klu Klux Klan.   The "freedom of speech" and of "the press" that D.W. Griffith, Thomas Dixon and Frank Wood exercised, ended up in people being murdered by the Klan revived at Stone Mountain Georgia under the explicit inspiration of that movie.  There is a direct line from the movie to those murders through the Klan that used it to organize and inspire its fascist terror.

As an aside, it is notable that Woodrow Wilson, one of the most famous progressives of the Progressive era, a scholar and academic of unimpeachable elite status, made Birth of A Nation the first movie shown in the White House, giving its "more speech" more of a boost in the national consciousness.  It's something that is allowed in the rules of the "level playing field".  Only later he regretted his role in it.

Since the advent of cabloid TV, it has been instrumental in promoting racism in shows like C.O.P.S, through FOX and through things such as CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight.  It has certainly promoted anti-Islamic hysteria that of the kind that has led to attacks against people of perceived middle-eastern ethnicity, including Sikhs. Dobbs has probably done more than anyone to promote bigotry against Latinos. The people influenced by the American media aren't generally a very informed lot. And that is not to mention the media promotion of the hatred of the poor,  often by depicting poverty in America as having a black or brown face, though it has no problem depicting poor white people as trash as well. That people like Dobbs** successfully depict themselves as populists while working against The People, even the poor whites who they use, is one of the putrid flowers of our deregulated media.   "Populist" should mean a lot more than a rich white racist controlling poor white racists by appealing to their racism.   But the destruction of real populism is a large topic which I haven't studied in sufficient depth to write about it.

I would recommend studying the history of NPR as a good example of where the kind of process "liberalism" I'm talking about leads.  In each and every case, in the end the process liberal will sell out the poor, the destitute, those who are discriminated against - accounting for such exceptions as those made for wealthy, white gay men and women employed by them.   Process liberalism is an elite pose, allowing the P.L. to pretend to be liberal while actually serving P.L.U.

If you find yourself tearing your hair while listening to Morning Edition, as I would be if I were not writing this, or some other NPR show, that's the reason more often than not.   The organs of process liberalism should be dumped and defunded, they are a big part of the problem.

*  As the living thinker who has had the most profound effect on me in the past decade, Marilynne Robinson,  has pointed out, traditional American liberalism is entirely different from European liberalism in that it assumes a higher goal than mere ability to do what you want.   Economic justice instead of lassiez faire economics is one essential difference.   Matched with real equality it accounts for a complete difference.

**  I was recently unsurprised to find out that Dobbs, like so many in our elite ruling class, liberal and conservative,  the first black president, Barack Obama, to racists like him,  is a Harvard product, fruit of the foremost of the training grounds for our ruling class.   Those Ivy League boys love their games with their winners and their losers.  And they hate to lose.

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